Rejoice in Every Wave
by Artemis Rae
Summary: During a trip to the beach, Annabeth feels contemplative, melancholy, overwhelmingly in love, and inspired. In that order.


It's windy on the beach, and with a huff Annabeth yanks her hair out of the top knot it had been pulled into, determinedly starting again. She's only been exposed to the salt water and humid sea air for less than an hour, but her hair already feels stiff and tacky.

 _No matter_ , she thinks. Rachel will have some Grade A professional level conditioner waiting in the condo.

The red-haired girl is safely ensconced in a canopy, wrapped in a caftan. Despite the wind, she has a canvas sized sketch book laying awkwardly across her lap. When Annabeth glances back at her, making sure the waves haven't pushed them too far from her eye line, Rachel's head is turned towards the pier to their left, and the tall fishing poles jutting into the sky above them. She's working with charcoal, despite the sand.

The ocean surges and crashes against her thighs, and Annabeth can't hold back the squeal of surprise. It's better than Montauk and Long Island, but they're only in North Carolina and the Atlantic is as cold as ever. The temperature is due to hit ninety but Annabeth still feels chilly and exposed.

Percy is ahead of her in the water, chest deep and hair soaked from the waves battering him, though she's is amused to see that he's managed not to lose his sunglasses.

"Annabeth, Annabeth, Annabeth." He chants her name, _like a prayer_ , like an impatient five year old, though the look in his eyes certainly makes promises of a more adult nature.

Annabeth feels a pit of heat low in her stomach that has nothing to do with the temperature. All these years, Camp's solid orange one piece suits have been just fine for swimming, but three months ago, as they'd searched for prom dresses, Rachel had discovered that Annabeth didn't own any other bathing suit. She'd been marched into the summer sale collection under the thread of receiving a charmspeaking phone call from Piper to compel her to do it anyway, despite her practical protests.

The result was a plain pink two-piece - high-waisted, at Annabeth's insistence - with delicate scalloped edging along the bottoms and over her shoulders.

("Percy is going to _drop dead_ ," Rachel had declared dramatically. "You look like a sunset!" From anyone else the compliment would be strange, but Annabeth's designer brain could understand what Rachel's artistic eyes had seen: the dark pink suit, her golden hair, and stormy eyes had created a certain color palette.)

While Rachel's prediction hadn't quite come true, Percy had been visibly tongue tied after sprinting ahead to the water's edge and turning around to call back to her just as she'd pulled her camp t-shirt over her head.

She wades in further towards Percy; something about being at the beach is putting her in a quiet, contemplative mood. There's an undertow pulling and pushing her from side to side, and the water is rough. She's barely into up to her waist and the waves are breaking over her shoulders, and some weird, far off part of her brain wonders if this is a metaphor for her life as a demigod, pulled in multiple directions while risking being bowled over at any given moment.

But then Percy gets a hold of her hand and pulls her towards him, and the thought is chased away much too quickly for her to pursue. "Why do you have that look on your face?" he asks, half teasing, half concerned.

She raises an eyebrow, the corner of her mouth twitching up, and she watches as his eyes drop down to her lips, like he wants to kiss her but he's holding back. "What look?" she asks, coy, like he doesn't have every one of her facial expressions cataloged and can't read her thoughts when she blinks at him a certain way. "That's just my face."

"Has Aphrodite been bugging you again? Or someone else?" he asks sternly, and Annabeth can't help the way her face twists. She'd wanted to sit back and spend the weekend pretending she and Percy, against all odds, were normal 18-year olds. Gods knew she had bigger things to worry about than how she looked in her first two-piece bathing suit.

The gods _had_ been bothering her. She was the Architect of Olympus, and the gods had no sense of mortal time. A project that Annabeth had once thought would only take a couple of years with the assistance of her godly family was dragging out exponentially as flighty gods bickered and changed their mind and asked her for something new every time she brought up new blueprints and tried to get construction started.

It left her wondering if this was merely the ultimate punishment for her fatal flaw - a cocky sixteen year old thinking she could rebuild the divine home of the gods. _Hubris_. She knows better now.

Before she can respond there's a roar and the ocean surges around them, the wave cresting with a slap across her face. Her world turns into a gray swirl, her feet are swept out from under her, and she reaches out instinctively, looking for something to anchor herself -

Except - it's Percy, it's always been Percy. _This_ is the part that's a metaphor for her life, mortal and otherwise.

Percy, with a strong hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her upright and back into sunshine, holding her steady while she gags and coughs and tries to shake away the hair that's fallen out of the bun and into her face.

Her hands instinctively come up to to wipe her eyes. "No," Percy orders gently, cupping her face. "Let me, it's salt water, it'll burn."

He strokes his thumbs gently over her eyelids and cheeks, wiping away the salt water and making sure her face is clear. When it's safe to open her eyes she gazes up at him, still focused intently on what he's doing. His touch is impossibly tender and loving.

Her fingertips caress his wrist, break his grip so she can lean forward, tilt up her head - they kiss and he surges forward the same as a wave, the son of Poseidon, towering over her, back arching to press against his, hands clenching at her waist and pulling her close with barely restrained power.

There it is, the feeling she'd been chasing; the one that quiets all that melancholy contemplation in her head. She is eighteen, she is spending a weekend at the beach with her boyfriend and best friend, and there's nothing more important waiting for her than the virgin margaritas that Rachel has packed in a thermos back on shore.

When they break away she's laughing - okay, to be honest, she's giggling, shoulder shaking, face flushed, every inch a giddy teenager in love with her boyfriend.

 _This is a feeling worth chasing_. Percy pulls back, gives her a sunny grin, and then leans in again. She thinks he's going for another kiss, but he veers at the last second - his lips land on her forehead and they stay there like that for a minute, eyes closed, the simple press of his lips against her.

Then he's stepping back, away from her, and Annabeth thinks fleetingly how just a few years ago she would be ashamed of the way she openly, instinctively reaches for him, and yet her hands spasm, and splash into the cold water foaming around her waist.

"Come on!" Percy laughs, turning towards the horizon to swim out further. She hesitates, watching the muscles move in his back, appreciating the sight of him in fluid motion. Like this, with the sun glaring off the sea and the water rushing around him, her eyes aren't even drawn to the scars marring his torso.

Immediately, he seems to sense she's not following. When he turns back to see why she's not at his side, she's can't move, even to warn him, as a huge wave gathers above his head.

It's less than a second before the wave crashes over his shoulders, not even phasing him, but that single image is _spectacular_. Percy, dark hair across his forehead, green eyes shining against his tan, lips swollen and pink, with a wave poised above him, already white at the crest -

He looks like a _god_.

When she catches up to him, he's laughing at her. "I know that look."

"What look?" she asks absently, because her mind is racing.

"The _get me to a drafting table_ look," he says confidently. "You're inspired. You're planning something. You're _working_ ," he adds, a wounded tone to his voice, "when we promised we would relax this weekend."

He's absolutely right. She's mentally rearranging the blueprints for the temple of Poseidon, making room for a ten foot tall mosaic, crafted from sapphire and pearl and the clearest green sea glass for his eyes. She wants to put it in front, drawing the eye as soon as you enter, surrounded by fountains. With recessed lighting and spotlights to make the gems shine, it will be the centerpiece of the temple. She can see it so clearly, and she hopes Poseidon signs off on it because she doesn't want to have to argue with a god.

But for this vision, she thinks she'll insist.

* * *

Originally posted to tumblr/AO3 on 5/31/17


End file.
